Missed Connections
by Halcyon Kingfisher
Summary: "The Ambrose Theatre - Thursday night - m4m - 19. You were the other fixer at Chicago's biggest monthly dance party. We never made eye contact, but our hacked cameras met across the crowded dance floor. Now I can't get you out of my mind." Two hackers - one an assassin, the other a vigilante - cross paths one fateful night, the encounter quickly setting them on a collision course.
1. Chapter 1

**A shot at some OC Watch_Dogs fiction. Violence, language, and insider trading. To be continued. Enjoy! ****-Hal**

**Chapter One**

It took a while for Samantha to realize what it was about Blume's remote wilderness headquarters that so creeped her out. Transplant these buildings from the glacial parklands of Illinois to a small Central American island, and it would look exactly like a setpiece from Jurassic Park. Any day now, she knew, the power would go out and a hungry T-Rex would escape its paddock.

But even dinosaurs would be preferable to the local fauna. She hadn't expected a paid internship at the biggest tech company outside of Silicon Valley to require driving through mountain man country just to get to work every day.

Thank goodness for Gavin. To a midwestern girl like Samantha, a gay black best friend might've once seemed a bohemian affectation. Now, in practice, he was a lifeline for her sanity.

This Thursday evening, when it seemed like no one else was on site beside the usual roaming contingent of armed security, she found Gavin seated alone in the break room, tapping away at his phone, snacking on a bag of M&Ms from the vending machine. The shutters were drawn to keep out mosquitoes, and the only light sources were the triangular fluorescents in the ceiling. Ever determined to look as professional as possible, Gavin was trimly dressed in a black suit, white shirt, black tie. Except for the M&Ms, the table in front of him was bare.

Sam heated some noodles in the microwave and joined him. "You're not eating dinner?" she asked.

"I'm arranging a hookup," he said, eyes still on his screen.

"Are you serious? On company time?"

"I'm always serious on company time. But they expect me to work overtime for a subsistence wage, then I get to use my breaks however I like."

They made small talk while Gavin chatted up some cute boy and Sam slurped her noodles. At about the time Sam finished her meal and disposed of her rubbish, Gavin pocketed his phone and slumped into his chair.

"No luck?" she asked.

"Bible Boy had a crisis of faith. He's going to talk to Jesus for a bit and then get back to me."

"Too bad. Back to work?"

"Sure."

They departed the breakroom and badged their way into the offices, passing no fewer than three armed guards on the way.

"Just curious," Sam asked. "If you'd set up this little tryst, would he have come to you or you to him?'

"Well, we've got like four layers of top-dollar physical security between us and the outside world, so I think the latter."

They badged their way into an elevator and selected their floor.

"You'd have gone to meet some stranger at night out here in the middle of nowhere?" she asked.

"I'd do a background check first," Gavin said. "Weed out the serial killers."

"You can do that?"

"Of course," he smirked. "I mean, look at where we work."

The elevator doors opened, and they plowed right into an older, hurried-looking businessman carrying a briefcase. He was well-dressed, in his sixties at least, every jowl exuding irascibility.

"Watch where you're going!" he snapped.

"Sorry, sir!" said Samantha.

He eyed them critically. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"We're the new interns," she explained. "We work here."

He sniffed contemptuously. "Glad to see we're meeting our diversity quotas, at least." Then he vanished into the elevator.

Gavin gaped at the closed elevator doors. "Was that Prather?" he asked.

"Yeah," Sam said. "Ignore that old fossil. He's an asshole."

"What's he doing here at this hour? Is there an executive meeting of some sort?"

"Beats me," Sam said. "If there was, I doubt he'd be at it. Rumor is he's getting phased out. They're looking for a new VP for Strategy."

"Yeah?"

"He's old money. Wall Street. This is a tech company. He was never a good fit. And good riddance to him," she added, turning to walk down the hall. She stopped and looked back when Gavin didn't follow.

Gavin was still looking at the elevator doors, a studious look on his face. His hand was in his pocket.

And then the power went out, plunging them into darkness.

"Oh my god," Samantha gasped.

"What?" asked Gavin.

"The raptor fences."

* * *

"First, we need to clear the trash out," Joey said, the trash being the snoozing bums scattered throughout the Chicago alley, each of them bundled up in rags and cardboard. In the evening darkness, away from the streetlights, they resembled human beings less than garbage heaps.

"Take the car around to the other end," said Pauly. "I'll work my way to you from this end, and you catch anyone who tries to run."

Pauly screwed the silencer onto his pistol, slipped it into his waistband, and stepped out of the Vespid. Joey drove off, and Pauly lingered at the alley's mouth with nothing to do but stare in wrinkle-nosed disgust at the human detritus littered before him.

Lazy fucking wastes of skin. Grown, able-bodied adults sucking at the government teat. The way Pauly saw it, the authorities ought to toss him some kickback for the services he was about to render. These bums were burdens on society, walking money pits. If they had an ounce of initiative, of personal responsibility, they'd get off the streets, get a job, stop groveling for fucking handouts that just went to pay for booze or drugs.

Or fucking phones. Jesus. Pauly couldn't believe what he was seeing. The nearest bum was some sort of gutterpunk kid tapping away at Fruit Ninja or some shit. A dye job, tattoos, piercings, and a goddamned touchscreen smartphone, and you could bet he was out on a sidewalk every day asking for money for food.

Pauly at least earned his keep. Fixing wasn't honest, but at least it was goddamned work. Like tonight. A reporter in this apartment building was about to meet some whistleblower, and Pauly and Joey were contracted to make sure the little snoop never made it to her appointment. She'd sneak out the back of the building only to find Joey, Pauly, and absolutely no witnesses.

The coupé rolled into view at the other end of the alley, and Joey flashed his lights, signalling to Pauly to begin.

Pauly walked toward the gutterpunk. The kid (maybe in his late teens, and far too pretty for his own good - probably a hustler, Pauly thought) finally looked up from his angry birds or whatever and made eye contact with Pauly.

"Show some mercy?" the kid asked.

"You've had enough charity," Pauly said, drawing his pistol.

The kid tapped something on his phone, and the wall-mounted steam regulator above his head burst right in Pauly's face.

* * *

The power in the server room went out mid-download, and Lucas Prather swore vehemently. Where were the backup generators? Wasn't ctOS supposed to cut down on just this sort of nonsense? Especially here, of all places? Too many incidents like this, and his little adventure in whistleblowing would become redundant.

He checked the laptop, still resting inside his open briefcase, but now connected by a cable to one of the servers. The laptop was still running off its battery, but the download was frozen at 10%.

He checked his phone. Of course the wireless network was down, so he couldn't get any updates on the outage. Not that there'd be anyone sending updates at this time of night. Damn it all to hell. How long was it going to take to get the power back on? Too long, and he'd miss his meeting with the reporter from WKZ TV.

Prather had quietly sold his holdings in Blume and a number of its subsidiaries, and bought up stock in its competitors. Now, when the public learned that the Chicago South Club, with the help of the mayor's office, had backdoor access to Chicago's ctOS, the taint of the scandal would send Blume stock plummeting, and Prather would buy up everything he'd sold along with whatever else the stockholders tried to unload. But none of that would matter if he missed his meeting with the journalist.

He waited a minute. Then another. Then another.

"Where's the goddamn power?" he asked aloud.

"Right here," said a young man's voice.

Prather's heart almost literally stopped. He stumbled backwards against the server, glancing about in the darkness until he finally recovered the presence of mind to shine his phone's light in the direction the voice had come from.

The suited intern from earlier stood there, hands in pockets, eyeing Prather coolly.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Prather snapped.

"Um, what the fuck are _you_ doing here?" the intern responded, then added, "Sir."

"That's none of your goddamned business."

"Oh. I think it's both our business."

"Get the hell out of here," Prather shouted, "or your ass is canned."

"I'm planning to quit anyway," said the intern. "Psychological distress. Due to the unsolved murder of an executive, right here on company property." He shook his head. "Very sad."

No. Oh no.

"You get the hell out of here!" Prather screamed. "I'll call the police. I'm warning you!"

"Okay. I'll wait."

The hand in the intern's pocket made a small movement, and the power came back on. Prather opened up the phone app, ignored the new voicemail, dialed 911. The call failed to go through, on either the first, second, or third attempt.

"You might want to check that voicemail," the intern said.

Moving slowly, sweat pouring from his scalp, Prather pressed play on the message.

The recorded voice was the intern's. "Lucky Quinn sends his regards," it said.

Prather looked up just in time to catch a bullet between the eyes.

* * *

The assassin crumpled in front of Michel, fingers clawing at his blinded face, the keen of his scream pitched as high as the geyser of escaping steam over Michel's head.

"That wasn't a request," Michel said. "It was an offer."

The Vespid at the end of the alley revved its engine. Alan swiped left on his phone, then watched through the ctOS camera mounted above the vehicle. The car's driver executed a sharp backward turn, pointed the car toward the alley, and floored the accelerator. The car sped straight over a transformer vault that, with a tap of Michel's finger, exploded beneath it, sending the car careening violently into a dumpster. The collision lifted the car's body into a forty-five degree cant, and then the car thudded back to the ground. Neither it nor its driver moved again.

By this point, the rest of the homeless, startled awake, were scurrying out of the alley. Michel just calmly stood up, stepping out of the way of the steam, and circled around the first assassin. By this point he was scrambling over the ground, searching for his dropped gun. Michel drew a wooden baseball bat from inside his tattered overcoat and used it to knock the gun away, sending it skittering across the concrete and into a gutter.

The assassin heard the clatter of the gun's departure. He started crawling after it, but Michel dissuaded him with a whack to the back of his knee.

Michel waited for the assassin's wailing to drop in amplitude, then asked, "Who hired you?"

"Augghhhh. Fuck you, you little shit. They'll kill me if I talk."

"I'll kill you if you don't talk," Michel said. "You've seen my face. Even if you never see again, you might be able to describe me. Can't have any witnesses. Surely you understand."

"Oh god," the assassin sobbed. "Oh god oh god oh god."

"Tell me what I need to know."

"We never met the client face-to-face. Joey handled all the communications."

"Thanks. You probably want to crawl away before investigators arrive. Watch out for traffic."

Michel walked over to the wrecked Vespid. The airbag had deployed, but to little effect. Shrapnel from the exploding transformer vault had penetrated through the car's undercarriage, puncturing both the airbag and its intended beneficiary. Happily, the driver's phone was both intact and ctOS connected, and it was a simple matter to access its text messages and call history.

Joey had been sloppy. He'd neglected to delete the most recent messages. "After the contract is completed, your payment will be wired to you. Meet the other fixer at the Ambrose Theatre to provide him with his cut. Don't worry about identifying him. He'll ID you."

Really? The Ambrose Theatre? Tonight?

Michel grinned, checked the time. Doors didn't open for another hour. If he hurried, he'd have time to shower at the Y and change into a clean outfit. He wouldn't look any fancier than he did now, but at least he wouldn't smell like he'd just finished staking out a homeless alley.

This could be his lucky night.

* * *

Contract completed, "Gavin" tracked Sam down and told her that Bible Boy had gotten back to him, so he was going to take the rest of the night off.

Back in the Loop, still in his suit, Markus parked his car in a tow-away zone right outside the Ambrose Theatre, and immediately banished the vehicle from his mind. He did do a visual scan of the other cars parked on the street, making mental notes of the ones he might want to take for his ride home.

He flashed his fake ID to the bouncer, paid the cover, walked through the door, and was instantly awash in noise, lights, and fog. He took his usual seat on the perimeter of the lobby, eyeing the crowd. Then he drew his phone and opened up the profiler.

The Ambrose Theater played host to a gay dance event once a month. It had been Markus's idea to do the money transfer here. The easier to get both paid and laid. He didn't know whether his contact would be here yet, but in the meantime there was plenty to distract him. For every face in the club, Markus could find a name, age, income, occupation, relationship status, even medical and criminal histories.

Grindr was for chumps.

Having scanned the end of the lobby near the door, Markus decided to scope out the end by the stairs, beneath the balcony where the DJ's booth was set up. He scoped out the security camera above his position, hopped into it, then pivoted upward, seeking out the camera at the other end.

Mesh networking. A system like ctOS was too complicated for every object in its network to communicate directly with the center while operating with any efficiency. That meant every camera, computer, phone, car, or other wireless device had to speak to each other in a distributed web of encrypted data packets, M2M, machine to machine, an internet of things. A camera didn't have to speak directly to ctOS so long as it was within wireless range of another camera, which was in range of a phone, which was in range of a car, and so on down the chain until you eventually reached an actual ctOS tower. This architecture allowed for much more distributed, simultaneous system processing without direct central oversight.

Of course, it also created plenty of space for sneaky little bastards like Markus to poke a tiny hole in the curtain and peek through to the other side.

He didn't know it, but tonight would be the night someone else peeked back.

Markus found the other camera in the field of view, and tapped on it. But he received an error message. Someone else was operating the camera.

For real? He zoomed in, tapped a couple more times. Same result.

In this zoomed-in view, he could see the camera's downward tilt as it panned slowly across the crowded dance floor. Someone else was using this camera to search the crowd. Markus's contact wasn't supposed to have this level of skill, at least from what he'd been told. So this was somebody else. Another fixer with ctOS access.

Markus's heart raced. For another fixer to be here, tonight, was probably a danger signal. If he was smart, he'd cancel the meeting, leave immediately, even if it meant missing his payment. He wasn't in it for the money anyway.

But for another fixer to be here, tonight, might've also been an opportunity. If this was a fixer, but he _wasn't_ here for Markus, then this could be somebody who understood the life Markus led. This could be someone to connect to.

Markus's mind reeled between the extremes of fear, excitement, and curiosity. Still operating his camera, deciding to take a chance, he tapped out a message and transmitted it to the other camera.

"Who are you?" he asked.

The camera stopped its slow pan, held position for a moment. Then it swiveled up and around, finally fixing on Markus's camera.

A new alphanumeric string appeared in Markus's own camera feed: "Who's asking?"

"I asked first."

"Then answer first. Only fair."

Markus was operating with the larger information deficit in this situation. He'd have to play coy. "Just someone looking for a little excitement," he typed.

"Oh yeah? I might be up for some fun. What kind of excitement are you looking for?"

"Can't you find out?" Markus typed. "Unlike everyone else in here, you've obviously got some skills."

"Thanks for spelling that correctly."

"No problem."

"Let me trace your access, and I'll be happy to profile you," the stranger added.

"I'm not that easy," said Markus. He indulged himself by adding a winky smiley to the message before sending it. Then he looked around. Whoever this guy is, he was playing it safe, so Markus would have to keep him distracted while tracking him down another way.

Standing up, he started at one end of the dance floor, with the first guy he saw tapping away on his phone. Markus hacked the guy's phone, confirmed that he wasn't the fixer operating the camera, and moved on to the next guy with his phone out, hacking him in turn.

He kept this rhythm going, working his way from one end of the theater lobby toward the other, swiping back and forth between the profiler and the camera feed.

"I like a challenge," the stranger said.

"So do I," Markus answered. "Especially if the prize is worthwhile."

"Are you?"

"Are you?" Markus asked back. "And you asked first this time, so you answer first. Your rule."

"Everyone's tastes are different," the stranger said.

"Mine are epicurean."

Markus's process of elimination had brought him halfway across the lobby, and he still hadn't IDed the other fixer. It made sense that the stranger would be located closer to the camera he was controlling. Markus was closing in. He knew it.

"So what are you in the mood for tonight?" the stranger asked.

"I'm up for a little adventure," Markus said. "Take a luxury car someplace private and exclusive, get to know each other personally, maybe with a little digital trip to enhance the experience."

"Where do you have in mind?"

"The Merlaut Hotel in Mad Mile has some private suites, great room service, and a nice view of Lake Michigan. If you don't have anything planned for tomorrow, we could stay the whole weekend."

No answer. Markus was three-quarters of the way across the floor, but that wouldn't matter if the stranger fled. The other camera was still inaccessible, at least.

Markus decided to take another chance. He started typing out a message:

"Hey, this kind of empty flirtation is fun when it's just some guy and it's building toward something meaningless. But you're the first guy I've ever talked to who might operate on the same level I do, and to call that 'exciting' would be an understatement. I understand why you're being so careful, but if there's an opportunity for something more here, then one of us has to let his guard down. If I have to go first, then so be it."

Then he added, "My name is Markus."

Markus sent the message, and then couldn't breathe. The electropop anthem playing over the theater's speakers slowed to a long, deep thrum as the world entered slow-motion. Markus shouldered past a group of dancers, setting his sights on the last target: One guy left on his phone, barely visible behind a cluster of patrons and a thick square pillar.

Could that be him? The view wasn't clear. Markus made out a vague impression of some kind of punk rock club kid, looking hot as hell, if very out of place in this crowd of well-groomed, upper-income men. But, for a fixer, money could be no object, and the lack of it no barrier to entry.

Markus centered the profiler's reticle on the guy, still afraid to inhale. The facial recognition system needed a half-second to upload any data.

"Michel," came the response.

The facial recognition data loaded - or it would have. But the image was a blur. Name, income, occupation were all unavailable. Facial recognition failed. And then all the lights in the club went out. Shouts and screams of alarm. Markus pushed his way through a knot of confused clubbers, made his way up to where the stranger was seated, shone his phone's light onto the seat...

Michel was gone.

Markus glanced around. Other patrons were getting the same idea he'd had, shining their phones' lights around, grumbling about the blackout. In the sweep of one light, Markus thought he caught a glimpse of Michel's nest of bleach-blond spikes heading toward the door. He shoved his way after him.

The avenue in front of the theater was dark, but not quiet. Horns blared, and intoxicated nightlifers were loudly complaining. Markus had no sight of Michel. Where had he gone?

The lights came back. Above the intersection, atop the elevated train tracks, a train's wheels screeched to life again, carrying its passengers away. Markus, unaware that the blackout had stopped a train right by the club, had the sudden premonition that Michel had boarded that train and was now escaping aboard it. He lifted his phone and aimed it at the train, his thumb hovering over the icon that would halt it again.

But he didn't push it.

He didn't know for a fact that Michel was aboard the train. He might have driven off in a car, or just skulked away down a side street. Markus really had no way to know. This was a clean getaway, and Markus was sporting enough not to begrudge Michel his victory.

Besides, he'd gotten a name. The rest would follow, in time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

It wasn't a car you normally expected to find parked outside an overpass by the river: a two-door Papavero coupé, dark gray paint job, smooth European curves. Stepping closer, blinking the sleep out of his eyes as they adjusted to the morning light, Michel whistled. The paint job looked to be something off a stealth bomber, the sort of thing you read about in magazines for very wealthy automobile enthusiasts, not abandoned outside a homeless encampment. Radar-absorbent paint of the sort containing tiny iron spheres coated in quartz, magnetized to convert radar energy into heat. If it was what it looked like, it was definitely illegal. Yet here it was.

Most likely a wealthy car connoisseur had taken the Papavero out for a night on the town and then opted to taxi home rather than drive drunk. It was a responsible choice, if risky in its own ways.

Opening an app on his phone, Michel confirmed that the car's alarm, keyless entry, keyless ignition, GPS, LoJack, and other computerized systems - not to mention the insurance and registration - were all ctOS-accessible. A single tap of the screen would open the car up and transfer ownership to a false identity. Not permanently, but long enough for Michel to take a joyride.

Which, given that he'd never learned how to drive, would be about thirty seconds long.

Michel sighed and walked on. He'd kept the car unlocker installed for truly desperate situations, but until Google perfected its self-driving car, it was taxis and L-trains for him.

He swiped left on the jailbroken Risu smartphone, past screen after screen of custom apps, each running a different ctOS exploits. He settled on one of the less spectacular programs. This one summoned the closest cab and, at the end of the ride, credited payment to the driver via an untraceable bank account. Uber for paranoid people.

The paranoia would have to continue. Michel had been reckless Thursday night, letting Markus (or whoever) coax his name out of him. The very instant Michel had exposed himself, his profiler alert had popped up. Fortunately, he'd had his scrambler running, and he'd set a blackout to trigger the moment anyone tried to profile him, allowing him to escape in the chaos.

Michel knew, in all likelihood, that Markus was the fixer mentioned in the assassin's message, come to the Ambrose Theater to receive payment for an undisclosed job. But the idea of meeting a guy who, like Michel, had snuck backstage of the networked city - someone who lived in the same parallel, augmented reality that Michel occupied - had lulled him into foolishness.

Well, that wouldn't happen again. Back on task. No distractions. And no more risks.

The taxi dropped Michel off in front of the WKZ TV building, and Michel circled the block in search of a nice, inconspicuous intrusion point. He found it across the corner from the news building, in a dark alley with a camera at the mouth. Standing behind the dumpster here, he had a view of the camera, which had a view of the camera on the corner of the ProviBlue Bank across the street. This camera, when aimed across the next street, peered straight into a small, first-floor news studio whose huge windows left it visible to the sidewalk. The studio was empty, and the stand-mounted news camera inside wasn't filming now. But it was plugged in, and wirelessly networked, and from that point Michel had his run of a building full of cameras.

* * *

A gun and a phone rested on a small table. Beyond them, a large glass sliding door looked out at a balcony, and at a view of the city skyline.

Markus safetyed the pistol, loaded a full magazine, checked the chamber, screwed the silencer into place, and slid the weapon into the shoulder holster inside his suit jacket. He unlocked the phone, confirmed that the charge was full, and opened the car on demand app, summoning a vehicle to the hotel.

The Papavero was waiting for him in front of the hotel, tank full, oil fresh, wheels aligned, a fresh bag of M&Ms in the cup holder, etc., etc. His phone unlocked the door and started the engine, and he drove across town, trying to push Michel out of his mind. There was work to do.

His contacts hadn't shown at the Ambrose Theatre (he'd subsequently been informed) because they'd died on a prior contract. So now it was up to him to finish their job and get paid for that, as well.

He parked down the street from the WKZ TV building and stepped out of the car.

That journalist had to disappear.

* * *

Ada Barreiro had a key in search of a lock, a decryption algorithm and nothing to decrypt with it. Despite the chaos that had occurred right outside her apartment building, she'd still shown up for her meeting at that dingy little roadside Quinkie's with sticky linoleum floors and dried ketchup crust on the tables. But her contact, the Blume insider who'd been mailing her, never showed.

She sat at her newsroom desk, turning the flash drive over in her fingers.

Mailing her. Not emailing her, but sending her snail-mail letters, and eventually a small package containing a flash drive with the supposed decryption key. The reliance on physical mail was probably the surest sign that her contact was sincere about his claims, namely that Blume's ctOS network was fatally compromised. He was supposed to show with a hard drive full of incriminating data for that key to decrypt, but he'd missed the meeting, and enough days had passed that, if he was going to send a letter explaining his absence, it would've arrived by now.

She was starting to think she might've gotten herself into more trouble than she could handle, when the building alarms went off.

* * *

Suddenly the security channels were flooded with chatter of a breach in the lobby, an intruder in the building, a guard down.

Michel, who'd been watching Ada through a ceiling-mounted security camera, spun the camera around, panning the newsroom, seeing nothing but startled and confused journalists, Ada included.

Michel didn't want to give up his stakeout position, but he didn't want to take his eyes off Ada, either, so he had no choice but to exit his alley and take a jog across the intersection, ignoring the drivers who blared their horns at him.

He was able to enter the lobby without any trouble, the security staff not yet having closed it off. There was, indeed, a guard lying unconscious on the floor, a burst regulator nearby. Panicked employees fled about, and security personnel rushed to lock the building down. Michel didn't see the fixer - Markus? - who'd instigated the chaos, but it wasn't like he knew what the guy looked like. Fact was, any of these people could've been responsible.

Michel looked at his phone. Ada was crouching behind her desk, eyes wide. Her phone was in her hand.

The phone was ctOS-connected.

* * *

Just when Ada was about to make a run for it, her phone vibrated in her hand. Once. A text message.

She looked at the screen.

"Take this phone call. Your life depends on it."

The phone rang.

"Uh … hello?" she answered nervously.

"Ada Barreiro," said a young man's voice, the slight accent not exactly American, though she couldn't place it given the current level of distraction. "You're in danger."

"Who are you?"

"I'm the guy who stopped those assassins outside your building last Thursday night. Whoever hired them has sent someone else to finish the job. I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen."

"Oh my god."

"Do you have a vehicle here?"

"Yes. In the parking garage."

"How many different ways are there from your newsroom to the garage?"

"Um, two? The stairs and the elevator."

"You don't know about the freight elevator?"

"I … guess I never considered it."

"Good. Then he won't expect you to use it. Now listen to me. The cameras in your location aren't yet being controlled by anyone else, which means he doesn't have a fix on your position. We're going to get you out of there before he finds you. I'm going to use the cameras to scout ahead. I need you to keep an eye on your flank, let me know the moment you see anyone unfamiliar approaching from behind. Don't advance position until I say to. Got it?"

"I think so."

"Okay."

Following the voice's instructions, moving, holding position, then moving again, she made her way out of the newsroom, down a hallway, through a service door that seemed to unlock for her of its own accord.

The service hallway was empty. The voice directed her to the freight elevator. During the ride down to the underground parking garage, she finally thought to ask the voice who he was.

"Nobody," he said. "Now, I don't know if the parking garage is clear yet, so I need to scope out the area before you go to your car. When you arrive, you need to stay in cover beside the elevator door. Do not so much as poke your head out until I give the word. What do you drive?"

"A Brubeck Cavale. Blue. Used."

The doors opened on the garage. Ada didn't see anyone else among the parked vehicles.

"Okay, one minute while I make sure the way is clear."

The camera mounted on the elevator's ceiling pivoted up to look through the open door, then remained steady.

She waited. How long she didn't know. She was too afraid to take the phone away from her ear, or to look down, even for the moment she'd need to check the time.

The voice came back. "It looks clear, but I can't get an unobstructed view of the car. There's a van in the way. I'm going to guide you around the garage perimeter until you're in a better position."

"In a better position for what?" she would've asked, but he was already giving instructions, and she was quickly out of the elevator, crouching behind cars, circling around until she was on the opposite side of her car from the van.

"Okay. Now do me a favor. Point your phone's camera at the car for a minute while I run a quick scan."

"For what?"

"Anything. Tracking devices. Bugs. Uh ... IEDs."

She shouldn't have asked.

Ada pointed her phone at her car, trying to keep her hand steady.

"Okay. It's clean. Get inside and drive out of here."

"But there's a lockdown-"

"I'll worry about that. Just go."

She climbed into the car, started the engine, and was very relieved when she didn't explode. She steered through the garage and up the ramp toward the exit.

The garage door, which had been lowered during the alarm, raised itself as she approached. A police officer posted outside darted toward her, waving his arms. But his earpiece must've overloaded with feedback, because suddenly he was doubled over, gripping his head in pain.

And then Ada was on the road, sliding incongruously into traffic.

"Okay," said the voice. "Don't go home. Find a safe motel somewhere. Use a fake name. Pay in cash. I have your number. Don't talk to anyone else."

"You're hanging up?"

"The assassin is still here. I need to neutralize him while I have the chance, or you won't be safe. We'll be in touch."

He hung up.

Ada spent an hour just driving around, wondering what in the hell constituted a "safe" motel, until the gas light came on and she was forced to pull in at the Owl Motel in Parker Square. She took another minute to make sure her heart rate was back in the same neighborhood as normal, and then felt something cold and blunt press against her temple.

"Hands on the wheel, where I can see them," said a voice from the backseat.

In the rearview mirror, beyond the silenced pistol pressed to her head, she saw a young man sit up. With his black suit and dark skin, in the shadows of the parking garage, she hadn't even seen him lying down back there.

He extended his free hand, palm up and open.

"Very slowly," he said, "hand me your keys, wallet, phone, and the flash drive."

"What flash drive?"

"The one I shot a guy for mailing to you. Trust me, right now there's no difference between playing dumb and being dumb."

She forked the requested items over. He pocketed the wallet, flash drive, and keys. Her phone he placed on his knee. Then he took another phone out of his pocket, aimed it at her phone, and held a button down. A light flickered a few times, as if scanning her phone. Then he pocketed his phone again, adjusted the positioning of the pistol against her temple, and pulled the trigger.

The hammer fell on an empty chamber.

"Bang," he said, "Ada Barreiro is dead. You got that?"

"I'm ... what?"

"You? You're Jennifer Fields." He dropped her cell phone into her lap, followed by a money clip. "And all you've got to your name is that phone, a thousand dollars cash, twenty-five thousand in an account, and your health. Given the circumstances, I'd call that pretty good luck, wouldn't you, Jennifer?"

She had trouble speaking, so she just nodded.

"I need to make sure you understand, Jen. Because I got lazy. I fired once when I should've gone for the double-tap. Lucky for me, I've got another bullet in the chamber, a real one. Now I'm going to hold on to this bullet in case I ever need it. You know, in case Ada ever turns up again and I have to finish what I started. Do you understand?"

She nodded again.

"Pop quiz. What's your name?"

"Jennifer."

"Jennifer what?"

"Um. Fields."

"Who's Ada Barreiro?"

She was trembling. "I don't know. Some … some dead woman."

"Good enough. Now look over there on the left. See that teal Relegate? It's unlocked, it's got a full tank of gas, and the keys are in the ignition. You're going to take that car, and you're going to drive so far and so long and so hard that it breaks down, and then you're going to live a nice, long, quiet life some place nobody's ever heard of, and where no one's ever heard the name Ada Barreiro. Got it?"

She nodded.

"Okay. Get going."

He watched her get in the car and drive away. Then he climbed into the front seat of the Cavale and started the engine. He'd have to dispose of it in the usual manner.

Hiding in the backseat with his phone off had been a smart chance to take, especially once he'd detected someone else poking around the building's internal network. Probably whoever'd saved Ada's life on Thursday. And probably the other fixer from the Ambrose Theatre.

Which meant ignoring Michel wouldn't really be an option.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

A quick read of Census data told Markus that there were 2.7 million people in the Windy City. Of these, about 45% were white and 49% were male. In that cross-section, you had about 178 thousand guys between the ages of 18 and 24, Michel's probable age range. With those kinds of parameters, Markus could conceivably sneak a subroutine into ctOS's facial recognition system that could scan for matches, streaming photos and locations back to him. But that would've taken forever even if his quarry hadn't been running a scrambler.

So he'd have to try something different. Assuming Michel was in the habit of hacking cameras, he'd also see their status feeds. Markus could type out a custom string of code, hack a camera, and program it to propagate the code over the camera network via the usual encrypted data packets, as a way to send Michel a message. But what would the message say?

Markus needed something that would look like gibberish to most people who might happen to glance at a camera feed, but that Michel would recognize as something intelligible.

So, assuming (with fingers crossed) that Michel was gay, Markus threw together a long, repeating jumble of acronyms and abbreviations of the sort you'd normally find on internet profiles created by men seeking the company of other men, on the hope that Michel would recognize these codes and, curiosity piqued, investigate further.

At the end of this string, he appended two bitly URLs. The first redirected to a Craigslist "missed connection" posting:

"The Ambrose Theatre - Thursday night - m4m - 19. You were the other fixer at Chicago's biggest monthly dance party. We never made eye contact, but our hacked cameras met across the crowded dance floor. Now I can't get you out of my mind."

The second URL redirected to an internet phone number that would automatically forward any incoming phone calls or text messages to Markus's cell phone.

And he waited.

* * *

All that trouble to save that journalist's life, and then, what, she disappears? Just like that?

Michel was livid, but he shouldn't have been surprised. He'd known his entire life how little justice was to be found in the world. Which was why you had to bring the justice yourself.

Toward this end, Michel taxied to Grant Park, where he adopted the broodingest, lurkingest pose he could manage while still loitering about and staring at his phone. With his profiler up and running, he hacked the device of anyone he saw carrying on a text conversation. It was while eavesdropping on the messages of Monifa Ward (Age: 29. Occupation: Billing Supervisor. Income: $50,000. Communications with potential criminal) that he hit pay dirt:

"I do this and I'm set."

"This isn't like you. I don't understand why you agreed."

"With these guys, you always agree."

Michel had to disagree.

Tracing the communication to a promenade overlooking the Chicago River, he interrupted a Sheldon Winterson (Age: 22. Occupation: Casual Fast Food Employee. Income: $12,200. Disowned by Family. Police Record WJ132334: Manslaughter Involuntary - Time Served) in the act of shaking down one Scott Fox (Age: 31. Occupation: Sculptor. Income: $48,700. Sells Vintage Porn).

Instead of money, Sheldon received a firm beating from a baseball bat, followed by a series of pointed questions: "Who do you work for! Who is Markus! Where is Ada Barreiro! _Tell me!_"

Sheldon didn't know anything. Neither did the next six guys, and Michel eventually had to admit that maybe the Batman approach wasn't working.

Well, he'd give it one more shot.

The ctOS's crime prediction system brought Michel to one of the Loop's several poorly-lit back alleys, where he used a hacked camera to watch as a Jerome Wilson (Age: 22. Occupation: Freelancer. Income: $22,900. Displays psychopathic tendencies. Police Record: WS100989. Breaking and entering - Bail) attempted to mug a Corey Reid (Age: 33. Occupation: Lab Assistant. Income: $88,100. Amateur magician).

Michel almost failed to stop the incident in time, distracted as he was by a very peculiar block of text scrolling through the margin of the camera feed.

After incapacitating the mugger, Michel took another look at the camera and found embedded within its status feed a link to a Craigslist listing. The message was clearly from Markus, who evidently intended Michel to call the phone number also embedded in the status feed. The timing was perhaps a bit too convenient, given how much of a stink Michel had made today in Chicago's criminal underworld, and spreading Markus's name all over town in the course of his investigation. But if Markus was trying to lure him out, perhaps Michel could turn the ploy right around on him.

He set up a disposable internet phone account, entered Markus's number, and then ... hesitated.

Why was he nervous? This was an enemy he was calling. An underworld criminal, not a prospective date. _Get your head straight_, he told himself.

He dialed the number.

* * *

Markus's phone rang. One look at the screen told him the incoming call was being routed through the false number he'd set up, which meant the call had to be from Michel.

For a moment, Markus was too afraid to answer.

He picked up.

"Hi!" he said, a bit too perkily.

A pause.

"Markus?" asked the caller.

"This is he. Is this Michel? Am I pronouncing that right?"

"Yes, that's right. Hi, Markus."

"Hello! I'm so happy to finally hear your voice!" Markus enthused. And what a voice it was. Was that an accent he detected? Not French, exactly... French-Canadian?

"Thanks," Michel said. "I got your message."

"I knew you would."

"So … what is it that you want?" Michel asked.

"Just … tell me about yourself. Who you are. Where you're from. How you got into the business."

"What business?"

"Fixing."

Another pause.

"You think I'm a fixer," Michel said.

"Aren't you?" asked Markus.

"Not exactly," Michel answered. "I'm not a hired gun. I don't take clients. If I were a fixer, I'd be the kind who works pro bono."

"See, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm interested in hearing," Markus said. "Something to help me understand you better. So, listen," he continued. "Do you want to meet up? I'd really like to see you in person."

"You didn't get a good enough look in the Theatre?"

Oof.

"Okay, you're right to be mad," Markus said. "I overstepped. I shouldn't have tried to track you down like that. I should've let you take your time to introduce yourself. But I'm trying again, now. You can say no. And if you are willing to meet, you can choose when, where. Totally up to you."

Michel seemed to consider for a moment.

"You know that sauna on Halsted street?" Michel asked.

Ew. Only by reputation.

"No," Markus answered, his tone decisive. "It's tacky. And it's gross."

"And it has a very strict dress code," said Michel. "No phones. No weapons. Just a towel. You want us both to lower our guards? You don't get less guarded than that."

* * *

The rendezvous location was on a two-lane road of low brick buildings in the Lake View neighborhood north of the Loop. Deliberately unobtrusive, there was no outward signage marking the business.

Of course Markus wasn't going to just walk right up. He had to assume Michel had hacked some cameras and was scoping the street out. So Markus should hop some other cameras, find the camera Michel was controlling, and work backward from there, tracking down Michel's location.

But Markus also had to assume that Michel would anticipate this maneuver, and would compromise some cameras in a network choke point near the rendezvous location, watching for intrusion attempts into the network while occasionally hopping back to Halsted Street to see if Markus had arrived. So Markus found an access point further out, probed the network from there, anticipating where Michel might be watching from, working backwards from those locations, doubling-back, stumbling down numerous dead ends and blind alleys, gaming things out, narrowing down Michel's play.

If you wanted to be perfectly cliché, you could've compared it to chess, except your playing pieces were cameras, the entire city was your board, and you didn't know your opponent's moves until it was too late.

Finding a compromised camera in a network dead end outside a parking garage on North Avenue, Markus approached it from the southwest. He waited in a parked car down the road until the camera was abandoned, its controller presumably searching further down the network. Hopping into the camera, Markus swiveled it around, and aimed it into the third floor of the parking garage.

There was Michel, crouched behind a pickup truck, phone in hand.

Markus was deliberately running with his profiler off, so as to avoid alerting Michel and to prevent a repeat of the incident from the Theatre. It seemed to work. Michel didn't react to the camera surveilling him.

Now, centering the camera on Michel, it was Markus's clearest view yet of his rival.

With his tattered overcoat, tattoos, and piercings, Michel was rough-looking, but even from this vantagepoint Markus could see that he was lean and healthy, and his face delicate of feature behind the ornamentation.

As Markus watched, Michel absent-mindedly reached into his pocket, popped a small, round, colorful piece of candy into his mouth, and chewed.

Markus's heart fluttered. It was hard to be certain at this level of resolution, but it sure looked like an M&M.

Markus had to fight the temptation to linger over the view. At any moment, Michel would discover that the camera right outside his hiding place was compromised by someone other than himself.

But what to do instead? Should Markus sneak up behind Michel? Capture him? Neutralize him? Maybe sic the cops on him, remove him from the picture without getting his own hands dirty? Just what was the end game, here?

Hardly believing himself for doing it, Markus disconnected from the camera and drove to the rendezvous point, as promised. He parked his car on the street, stepped out onto the sidewalk, and, phone in hand, confirmed that the nearest camera was compromised. Even with the naked eye, he could see that the camera was pointed right at him.

He waved at it.

"Here I am," he said softly. "So what next?"

"Gavin!" shouted a young woman's voice.

Markus turned.

What the hell?

"Samantha?" he said.

* * *

Even with the camera pointed at Markus and zoomed in, its microphone wasn't quite able to make out what the handsome, well-dressed fixer said. But it very clearly picked up the voice of a young woman shouting "Gavin!" And it just as easily detected Markus saying "Samantha?" as he turned to face her.

She hurried up the sidewalk toward him, looking breathless and flustered.

"Where the hell have you been?" she demanded. "You leave work, and then the next day I find out you've quit? Just when a VP's been murdered?"

Michel profiled her. Samantha Miller. Age: 19. Occupation: Intern. Income: $40,000. Blume Affiliate.

Blume? Holy shit.

"What are you doing here?" Markus asked.

"Looking for you!"

"What?"

"I pulled your file to try to look you up. And all your documentation looked good. But you know what happened when I actually tried following up on your references? Looking up names, calling numbers, sending emails? Like half those people didn't even exist. And the other half had never heard of you!"

Markus looked bewildered. "You ran a background check on me?"

"You said it yourself: Look at where we work," Samantha said with a shrug. "So then I had to resort to visiting, um, local gay establishments, walking all over Boystown, talking to shop clerks and panhandlers and street musicians and whoever else could be counted on to hang around here. I gave them your description, and I told them if they saw someone matching it and gave me a call, I'd pay them well for the trouble. And here you are!"

The astonished look on Markus's face was familiar to Michel. It was the look of someone who'd forgotten that there were ways of finding people that predated the internet. Michel had worn the same expression himself on more than one occasion.

"So where the hell did you go, Gavin?" Samantha asked, undeterred. "Because I have to say, your lack of a personal history combined with the timing of your disappearance, and the fact that you and I were the last two people to see Prather alive … you know, it's got me a little weirded out!"

Markus struggled to form words, and eventually muttered something feeble about "psychological distress."

Down the road, at the intersection, a strange movement caught Michel's eye. Several four-door vehicles of like make, model, and color, driving in a line, rounded the corner and slowly made their way toward Markus's and Samantha's position.

They were behind Markus's back, and Samantha apparently wasn't trained to pick up on these kinds of danger signs. So Michel was the only one who noticed their approach.

There were no bollards or spikes or steam pipes in the path of the cars. Michel didn't have time to hack Samantha's phone to send a warning. (She was a bit too fixated on Markus at the moment anyway.)

All he had time to do was trip the alarm on one of the street-parked cars behind Markus.

* * *

Markus heard the car alarm, turned, saw the hit coming, and tackled Samantha to the ground just as the gunmen leaning out of the car windows opened fire.

The world seemed to move in slow motion. Samantha shouted. Everyone else on the street was screaming. Markus had his pistol out. The gunman in the first car was lining up his next shot when Markus put a bullet through his forehead. Markus's next two shots went through the car's front tires, and the vehicle lost control, plowing into a parked car. The following car rear-ended it, obstructing the street, and Markus realized he and Samantha had only a couple of seconds to get out of there alive.

"Run!" he screamed, another barrage of gunfire quickly drowning him out.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

Samantha launched herself into a sprint, and Markus took off after her. With a backward glance, he confirmed that the other assassins were maneuvering around the crash, already resuming their pursuit.

Looking forward again, he saw that Samantha had opened her lead considerably.

"Slow down!" Markus gasped, struggling to catch up, wishing he'd paid more attention when Sam had reminisced about her glory days as a high school track star.

Instead of slowing down, she turned a corner into an alley. When Markus reached the same corner, she was gone from sight.

Dammit.

Hearing a machine gun open fire, he crouched to the ground behind a car, shattered window glass showering him. Markus laid down some blind fire, forcing the assassins under cover, then bolted down the street, keeping low behind the parked vehicles.

Who were these people? Why were they after him? Markus didn't have the luxury now of speculating. As for how they'd found him, he supposed they'd had someone tailing Samantha, waiting for her to hit paydirt in her own search for him. It was a working theory, anyway.

The assassins were shouting down the street, and Markus realized that another carload of them had turned the intersection at the other end. They were flanking him.

Markus fired a couple of shots to slow them down, rolled across the hood of a bullet-riddled vehicle, and dashed across the street to a ctOS-connected Vessel parked there. (Not his usual caliber ride, but he was under duress.) A tap on his phone, and the door was already unlocked with the engine running when he leapt in. Bullets were perforating the side of the car when he slammed the accelerator and jerked the wheel left, clipping the car parked in front of him as he emerged into the street. He sped to the intersection, even managing to run down one of the gunmen on the way, and skidded into a turn, angling down another avenue.

As he passed through the intersection, he hit the app that turned all the traffic lights green. A sudden traffic jam wouldn't stop his attackers, but it would at least buy Markus some time.

A glance in the rearview confirmed that the assassins were already in pursuit, and being much less mindful of traffic and pedestrians than he was. If he didn't put a stop to this chase soon, people were going to get seriously hurt.

Swerving into a narrow side street, he shot through to the other side and braked into a sideways skid, ending neatly in a parallel parking spot on the opposite side of the road.

Markus stepped out of the car and gazed down the side street, pistol in one hand, phone in the other, as the assassins' vehicles accelerated through the side street toward him, as if intent on running him over.

They never got that far. Markus pushed a button on his phone, and the bollards at the near end of the side street popped up right underneath the first car. It's rear wheels were launched clear into the air, and the driver struggled in vain to regain control. The second car simply plowed into the bollards, and the third car violently rear-ended the second, all of them colliding at their top speeds.

Markus sidestepped the first car as it went skidding past him, the chassis sending up sparks as it scraped across the concrete, and he calmly plugged the gunman and driver as they went by. He then charged into the side street, dashing up the hood of the second car, dispatching its assassins as he went. Standing on the roof of the second car, he saw that the third car only contained a gunman in the passenger seat, still recovering from the accident. Markus shot him through the windshield, in the heart.

He found the driver of the third car further down the side street, sprinting away from the accident. Quite wisely, the man had his phone out, calling for backup. Markus jammed the local comms, then hit another button, raising the bollards at the other end of the side street.

The timing was perfect, if incongruously comical, with one of the blockers hitting the fleeing driver right in the groin.

Markus walked up to the groaning assassin, kicked away his phone, and pressed the point of his pistol under the man's chin.

"I don't have a lot of time before the police show," Markus said. "And whether or not they find one more dead body depends on how quickly you talk."

* * *

Samantha's lifelong fear of getting killed by dinosaurs was starting to look very silly in retrospect.

When the violence started, she'd been paralyzed by terror, unable to process what was happening. But when Gavin (if that was his real name!) ordered her to run, she hadn't needed to think. Her body took over, and off she went.

She'd dashed down an alley, vaulted over a parked car, and clambered over a fence before stopping to collect her wits. It was then that she realized that Gavin hadn't kept up with her. Was he all right?

"There she is!" someone shouted.

Looking in the direction of the voice, and seeing another of those cars rounding a corner, Sam decided to worry about herself for the moment.

She ran down another alley. Behind her she could hear the car's tiles squeal as it followed her down the alley - probably, she suspected, in violation of traffic law.

She vaulted over a stack of pallets, then found herself cornered in some sort of loading area behind some large buildings. Nobody around. Just crates, parked vans, rubbish bins, more pallet stacks, and no way out that she could see.

She could hear the car getting closer, even knocking over obstructions in the rush to catch up to her. Seeing no other option, she ran into the loading area and took cover behind a stack of crates, her heart racing.

She heard the car pull into the loading area, then the arrival of another car, and then gunmen and drivers getting out, barking orders, moving down the sides of the loading area, checking each hiding spot one-by-one.

She fished her phone out of her pocket and dialed 911 before they got any closer, but the call failed to connect. Something was interfering with the mobile network. Were they jamming the lines somehow?

What did these people want with her? Why were they after her? Was it because they'd seen her talking to Gavin? Then why were they after him? Why was he carrying that gun? Who the hell was he, anyway?

She forced herself back into the present, and the more pressing question of whether the gunmen were getting closer to hiding spot. She couldn't see them, and the irregular acoustics in this loading area made it hard to pinpoint where the men were by their voices.

Looking upward, she saw a camera mounted on the building exterior. She wished she could see what it saw. Then she'd at least be able to track the gunmen without taking the risk of poking her head out from behind cover.

_Look at where we work._

Samantha suddenly had a terrible, brilliant idea. It would probably cost her her job even if it saved her life. But, well, it wasn't that great an internship to begin with.

She confirmed that her phone still had wireless ctOS access. Opening her browser, she went to her work web site, entered her ID, password, and a randomly-generated key displayed on the little electronic fob she wore on her keychain.

Her job at Blume was, simply put, to plug security holes in the ctOS network, which meant she was never short on work. Every time a hacker stole a system key, or someone gave away their password, or a phone was lost, that created a security breach. It was Samantha's job to go through pages of security notifications one at a time. For each alert, she then had to go through millions and millions of lines of ctOS code, find the vulnerability, and patch it up.

It was plodding, tedious, interminable work, but it also meant she had access to a workflow manager filled with thousands of potential vulnerabilities that could give her access to the local ctOS mesh network. All she had to do was log in to her work account and open it up.

Easy, right?

"You have reached the 90-day limit for your current password," she was informed by a system notification that popped up in her browser. "You must reset your password before proceeding."

Samantha Miller. Dead of procrastination. R.I.P.

She tried to think up a sentence that would be easy to remember later and very quickly settled on "Someone's after me and now they have a gun and oh god somebody please help me!" She entered the first letter of each word into the password field, replacing the vowels with numbers as she went, re-entered the string into the "verify password" field, and hit submit.

An error message popped up: "Passwords did not match. Please try again."

She reentered the password in both fields, being extra deliberate about hitting the right touchscreen keys, and hit submit, only to get another error message:

"Valid passwords cannot contain your name. Not even in 1337-speak. Please try a different password."

The hell?

She tried typing the password out in a field where all the characters would be visible: S4m4nth4g40gsphm!

Wow. What were the odds?

She broke "Someone's" out into "Someone is", entered the new password in twice, and finally succeeded in updating her password. Logging into her work account, she opened up the task manager. It wasn't optimized for mobile viewing, so there was a lot of awkward sliding around of her finger in search of a vulnerability report. Finding a compromised system key, she opened the ctOS mobile app on her phone, entered the debug mode, pasted the key into the syntax, and ran it.

Access granted.

She aimed the phone at the camera above her head and tapped a button.

Suddenly her phone was displaying the feed from the ctOS camera. She was looking down at herself, crouched behind the stack of crates.

One of the gunmen was right next to the crates, leaning around, about to spot her.

But there was a junction box next to the gunman. "Vulnerability detected," a notification helpfully informed her.

Samantha tapped it.

The explosion ripped through the gunman, sent the crates flying, knocked Samantha to the ground and the phone from her hand.

The other gunmen fired at her, and Samantha went scrambling behind a row of large trash cans, snagging her phone as she went diving for cover.

Oh god oh god oh god. She looked at the camera feed in the phone again. The gunmen were converging on her position. But one of them was walking across a transformer vault.

She triggered an overload, exploding it and him.

The two remaining gunmen went scrambling for cover, which was a nice change of pace. A little notice popped up, and she saw that one of them was carrying a grenade. A grenade with, apparently, a wireless internet antenna. This seemed like a questionable strategic choice. Samantha supposed it could be useful if someone wanted to detonate it remotely after planting it somewhere. Problem was, someone else could do the same thing. Which she promptly did.

Okay. One guy left.

Samantha, who barely registered the fact that she'd just violently killed three dudes in rapid succession, looked around, trying to pinpoint the last gunman. But she'd lost track of him in all the explosions and flying limbs. Where had he gone?

He found her first, hitting her in the back of the head with the butt of his machine gun. Samantha went sprawling onto the concrete. Rolling onto her back, she saw the gunman level his firearm at her.

A baseball bat collided with his skull, and the gunman landed on his face. He didn't get up.

A grungy raver with bleached spikes and a tattered overcoat stepped out from behind a van, twirling the baseball bat. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Ah… I guess?" she said, rubbing the back of her head. "Thanks for the assist, Mr. Punk-Rock Babe Ruth."

"My pleasure."

He extended a hand, helping her up.

"Though it happens there's a way for you to return the favor," he said.

"Okay…. Sure?"

"That guy you were meeting with before you were attacked? You called him 'Gavin'?"

"Yeah?"

"I need you to tell me everything you know about him."

* * *

It was the Chicago South Club. It was Lucky Fucking Quinn. Markus was on the run from his number-one client.

Markus briefly considered holing up in his hotel room, then remembered that, oh, right, Quinn owned the damned hotel. Which was a pretty good indicator of how much trouble Markus was in. Instead, he stole another car, drove to a parking garage, and sat in the vehicle with the engine off while he tried to make sense of events.

Why was there a contract on him? Either the Club was treating him as a loose end that needed tying up after his most high-profile hit to date (a development that suddenly seemed inevitable), or, worse, they'd discovered that he wasn't being entirely literal in the execution of some of his duties.

Either way, the last time he'd found himself in this much trouble, he'd had to kill the guy behind it and then leave town, never to return. A repeat performance was probably necessary, if Markus was ever going to be safe again. Not to mention Ada. And Samantha. And, yes, probably even Michel as well.

There was no way around it. Lucky Quinn would have to die.


	5. Chapter 5

**Warning: This chapter contains spoilers for the game.**

**Chapter Five**

"I'm not sure we needed to go to a coffee shop for this," Samantha said, "since telling you what I know will take all of about ten seconds."

She also wasn't sure how safe it was to be sitting in a Brewed Delight with this stranger right now. It felt dangerously exposed. Given current events, shouldn't she be in hiding?

Then again, after finding out that her favorite coworker was an assassin, surviving a mob hit, and then exploding three guys with her phone, there was something about just sitting in a coffeeshop with her hands wrapped around a cappuccino that felt reassuringly normal. Like maybe she hadn't actually gone completely crazy.

"It's fine," the stranger said. "Just take your time and tell me what you can."

"Like what?" Samantha said between sips.

"Like, is his name is actually Gavin?" he asked.

"I doubt it," she answered.

"Oh. Okay," he said. Did he sound … relieved? "So what _do_ you know about him?"

"Nothing I believe anymore."

"Then don't focus on things he said," the stranger said. "Try to remember the things he did."

"What do you mean?"

"Patterns of behavior. Modes of speech. Interesting quirks. The kinds of things we do all the time without really thinking about them."

She thought for a moment.

"He fucking loves M&Ms," she finally said. "Does that help?"

He was quiet for a few long moments, during which she suspected he'd given up on learning anything useful from her.

And then, to her surprise, he said, "Actually, I think it might."

* * *

Something big was going down at the Merlaut Hotel. It had always been an exclusive establishment, but Markus had never before seen it with armed private security posted at all the entrances. Were they expecting him? Hell, were they expecting an army?

Standing across the park from the hotel, his clothes ruffled by the windblown night, Markus checked his phone. Apparently Lucky Quinn was playing host to a fundraiser for the mayor. The presence of Chicago's two most powerful, corrupt men in the same place at the same time _might_ just about justify the presence of all this security, but Markus still found it suspicious.

Well, best to stick to the plan. There was a side entrance down by the dock that ran alongside the hotel. Markus walked up to it, disabled the electronic lock, and entered the hotel through a service entrance. From here he was able to find the janitorial closet, where he commandeered a mop and bucket. Exiting the closet, he pushed the mop bucket in front of him, heading for the elevator bank.

He passed a couple of patrolling guards on the way. He ignored them, and they ignored him right back.

Markus had changed clothes before coming to the hotel, donning a janitorial jumpsuit instead of his usual black business suit. If they were expecting him, they were expecting him to be well-dressed. But a young African American male custodial worker was the next best thing to invisible. No need to hide when other people will do the work of not noticing you.

Markus entered an elevator and overrode the keypad. Even if his keycard still worked, it might alert security that he was in the hotel. He rode the elevator to his floor, where he pushed the bucket down the hallway.

Outside his door, Markus could see that the light in his suite was off. Phone in hand, he activated a ctOS scan. The detection wave pinged off a signal inside the suite. Whoever it was, he wasn't located in the area of the bed. The stranger wasn't sleeping. He seemed to be sitting still in the darkness, as if waiting.

Markus knocked, then watched on his phone as the signal silently crept up the door. When it was immediately on the other side of the door, Markus fired a silenced bullet through the peephole.

He override the electronic lock and pushed the door open, forcefully shoving the body of the dead assassin aside. He pulled the mop and bucket in after him and closed the door.

Time to get dressed.

* * *

Back during their first conversation, when they'd made contact in the Ambrose Theatre last week, Markus had mentioned the Merlaut Hotel as a place for the two of them to spend a torrid evening together. Michel hadn't thought much of it at the time. It wasn't the kind of detail that made for a useful lead. But combined with what Samantha had told him….

From outside the Merlaut, riding the connections of the local ctOS network, it was a simple matter for Michel to tap the camera above the front desk. Aiming it at the computer, Michel hacked his way in and pulled up a list of guests. There was no Markus in there (and no Gavin, for that matter) but Michel hadn't expected Markus to be checked in under his real name. That was why he hadn't bothered with this approach before.

What Michel did find was a list of charges and service fees for each of the rooms, including one luxury suite whose long-term occupant, every single day, ate a bag of overpriced M&Ms from the suite's minibar.

Gotcha.

Now that he had a lead, Michel walked straight in through the lobby, heedless of the many armed guards roaming the place. They could have shot him to pieces in a second, but Michel didn't let that consideration undermine his cool. More likely, they were here for the mayor's fundraiser going on upstairs, not for him.

The key to going unnoticed (or so Clara had explained to him, years ago) was to be as conspicuous as possible - hence the dye job, the piercings, the tattoos. That way people assumed you had nothing to hide. And when they did notice you, well, they only noticed the body art. It was easy enough to change them after that, to disappear. Like she had.

So it was that Michel walked nonchalantly into an elevator, completely unmolested by security. With his phone, he overrode the keypad and set it to take him up to Markus's floor. There wasn't even anyone else in the elevator. This was going more easily than he'd expected.

And then the security channels flooded with chatter about an intrusion in the hotel security system.

* * *

Back in a proper suit, Markus reloaded his pistol. This time, there'd be a real bullet in the chamber.

Now, to kill Lucky Quinn while he still had the element of surprise.

Markus stepped out of his suite just at the moment when the security channels flooded with chatter about an intrusion in the hotel security system.

So much for that plan.

Okay, assume the worst and work from there. If security were looking for an intruder in the hotel, it was probably going to be Markus. If so, the first place they were going to check was going to be his suite, and it wouldn't take the Club long to realize that the assassin they'd posted there wasn't answering his phone.

Which meant there was every likelihood that a wave of armed goons were staking out the stairs and coming up the elevators, on the hope of cornering him. But the fundraiser was downstairs, on the terrace level, which was the direction Markus would have to go to find Quinn - and to escape, of course. Which meant he'd have to go through security.

Or around it.

Markus ran up the stairs, overriding the electronic lock at the top floor. He pushed his way onto the roof, rain hitting him on the face. Raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sudden nighttime storm, he did a visual scan of the roof's edge.

Markus had spent enough time in this hotel to know how diligent they were about keeping the exterior clean. Every window was cleaned once a week, the window-washers riding a suspended platform hanging from a motorized cable mechanism. And there it was, perched on the edge of the roof.

Markus hopped onto the platform, hacked it with his phone, and rode it slowly downward.

Markus had never personally been to Quinn's private offices, but by now he knew where they were located: right above the lobby, just off the terrace level, with westward-facing windows looking out at the city, about ten floors directly below Markus.

The descent was excruciatingly slow, and only got worse when he heard the sounds of gunfire, explosions, and a helicopter echoing from around the other side of the building.

What was going on?

* * *

Michel hit the emergency stop on the elevator and hacked the doors open about halfway to the top of the building. He didn't know if he was the intruder security were looking for, but, in case he was, he didn't want them cornering him inside a metal box. He dashed down the hotel hallway, entered a stairwell, and made ready to run up the five flights of stairs still between him and Markus's suite.

He stopped in his tracks when heard sounds of gunfire and explosions echoing up the stairwell from somewhere down below. Was that Markus, engaged in some sort of firefight? Who else could it be?

Uncertain what he was getting himself into, but determined not to let Markus escape, Michel switched direction and charged down the stairs.

The two security guards must've heard him coming, because they were already hunkered down with their machine guns drawn when Michel rounded the landing above them.

"Freeze!" one of them shouted.

Michel launched himself over a railing, taking the quickest route down toward them, and landed on one of the guards, crushing him to the ground and using him to cushion his landing. The other guard spun, bringing his weapon to bear on Michel, but Michel spun faster, swinging the baseball bat free from his overcoat and catching the second guard on the nose.

With both of the guards laid low, Michel resumed his downward scramble.

* * *

Crouching low behind the platform's short steel walls, Markus halted the descent outside Quinn's offices. Peeking through the rain-streaked glass, he could see armed men rushing through the rooms. None of them noticed Markus, apparently in too much of a hurry to look out the window.

When the room looked clear, Markus leaned out for a better look.

Off to the side, behind a large glass window, he could see what looked like some sort of panic room. Quinn was lying on the ground, his posture somewhere between crawling and groveling. He wasn't moving. He didn't even seem to be breathing. Was he dead?

Markus profiled him.

Dermot "Lucky" Quinn. Age: 75. Occupation: Business Investor. Income: $10,015,400. Recent Heart Surgery.

Apparently not recent enough. Markus couldn't believe it. Had he really just risked his life infiltrating this place, dodging security left and right, just to kill Quinn, only for the geezer to die of old age minutes before his arrival? How terrible could his luck get?

That was when the police helicopter emerged from around the hotel, shining its spotlight on Markus, the loudspeaker demanding his immediate surrender.

Markus hunkered down out of sight and tapped a button on his phone. The helicopter's onboard electronics overloaded, the spotlight exploding, and the helicopter jerked away as its pilot struggled to regain control of its systems and the crew hurried to replace bulbs and fuses.

Markus quickly fired a dozen bullets from his pistol through the office's plate glass window. Then, bracing himself on the platform's steel railing, he kicked a hole through the cracked, spiderwebbed glass, shattering it.

He holstered his pistol and dove through what remained of the window, shielding his head with his arms. Getting to his feet inside the office, he broke right down the hallway, in the direction opposite the one he'd seen the armed guards go earlier. He exited the door out onto the terrace … and froze in his tracks.

It looked like a war zone out here. The terrace was littered with the bodies of security guards. Everywhere Markus looked, he saw bullet holes, burst electronics, the smoking wreckage of explosions.

This was no mere gunfight. A fixer - a hacker - had come through here, and an especially lethal one at that.

Could it have been Michel?

Something hard, rounded, and wooden pressed itself up under Markus's chin.

Markus froze. Without moving his head, he turned his eyes to the right, saw him standing there in his peripheral vision, eyes burning, a baseball bat held steadily near Markus's throat.

"So you wanted to meet in person?" Michel growled.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

Surrounded by death and carnage, drenched by a nighttime rainstorm, holding his hands in the air while his punk renegade vigilante crush menaced him with a Louisville Slugger, Markus tried to think of something to say that would defuse the situation.

"I guess this is the wrong time to ask for a date?" was all he could manage.

Michel sputtered. "Are you out of your mind? What on Earth makes you think I'd go on a date with you?"

"We have so much in common!"

"Like what?"

"We're both gay, attractive, stylish. We're both highly-skilled urban hackers operating outside the law. Uh…" Markus reached for something, anything substantial. "We both like M&Ms."

"What makes you think I like M&Ms?"

"I saw you eating some. Earlier. When you were watching Halsted Street from that parking garage."

Michel blinked. "You spied on me? Again?"

"Yeah, but that time you were trying to spy right back. And my point still stands. We have similar tastes in sweets. Something in common."

"Those were Skittles."

Markus's shoulders slumped. "Oh."

"You think you're so clever," Michel seethed.

"Not lately."

"You think you can do whatever you want, no matter who gets hurt, so long as you get paid."

"It's not really about the money," Markus said. "I mean, look at us. We're information-age alchemists. We tranaform aether into gold. What do we care about money, right?"

"Shut up!" Michel snapped. "Turn around."

Markus turned toward Michel, opening his mouth to say something.

"Other direction!"

Markus turned away from Michel. "You're reacting to all this in completely the wrong way," he protested. "It's like you've got some kind of grievance against me, when I've never meant you any harm at all."

"Is this where you tell me it's not personal, it's just business?"

"Of course it's personal!" Markus said, shouting over the rain. "It's always personal. Everyone I've ever done in, I've never seen them as anything but a human being, even if a bad one. No amount of money has ever made me pretend they were otherwise."

"How noble of you," Michel said, his voice withering.

Markus could feel the blunt end of the baseball bat pressing uncomfortably against the back of his head. He supposed it was meant to be threatening, but Markus wasn't sure it was tactically smart. If Michel wanted to hit him with the bat from this position, he'd need to swing the weapon away from him before swinging it forward again. It would take twice as long to hit him. In that time, Markus was reasonably sure he could put enough additional distance between them to draw his pistol and line up a shot.

Question was, did he want to shoot Michel?

"I don't care what you tell yourself to make yourself feel better about what you do," Michel continued. "It's wrong. And it ends tonight."

"Okay. You're right. That's why I quit."

A pause. "You what?"

"That's what I came here to do. Get myself out of the game. When those gunmen attacked me in Lake View, I knew it was time to stop. So I came here to kill Lucky Quinn. It was the only way to get free."

File under "just true enough".

"That's bullshit," Michel said. "Quinn's like a million years old. No one's ever gone after him and survived. That's the whole freakin' reason he's called Lucky."

"And now he's dead," Markus shrugged. "It was literally him or me, and I guess his luck finally ran out. Check tomorrow's papers if you don't believe me."

"Oh, sure. And I guess I should just let you go free until then."

Markus turned to look Michel in the eye. "Don't you see? You don't have to stop me. I've already stopped myself. Do you really want to risk getting more blood on your hands just to find out the next morning that it was completely unnecessary?"

The bat wavered slightly, and Markus could see Michel's resolve flagging.

"I … I don't know if I can trust you," Michel said at last.

That's what it always came down to, wasn't it?

Markus didn't believe in telepathy, but he found himself literally trying to will Michel into believing him. _Come on, kid. I wasn't going to give up this life. Not initially. But I'll give it up for you. And I hardly even know you. Just give me that chance. _

But Markus would never find out whether he had psychic powers. Because the police helicopter chose that exact moment to reappear over the terrace, shining its spotlight on their little standoff.

* * *

"Freeze!" an amplified voice commanded. "Drop your weapons and put your hands in the air!"

Michel and Markus both looked at the helicopter, and then at each other.

And then, in unison, in opposite directions, they ran.

Michel leapt over the wall surrounding the terrace, rolling across the hotel roof and hopping back to his feet. Darting toward the edge of the roof, he slid over the edge onto a wet glass canopy, then slid from it onto the ground, before the helicopter sniper could draw a bead on him.

But the helicopter wasn't in sight. Between the two of them, Markus was the one it had followed.

Startled civilians gawked at Michel, but he ignored them, rounding the corner of the building in time to see Markus hop aboard a parked motorcycle and speed away inland. Markus must've escaped via the glass balcony in front of the hotel.

It was a dramatic getaway. Already there were a least half a dozen squad cars between Michel and the fleeing Markus.

Why such a large police presence? Who'd killed those security guards on the terrace? Something else was going on tonight, something that Michel and Markus had only stumbled into. The Chicago PD had shown up in force, and now Markus was the latest focus of their attention. So long as he was fleeing the police, he'd be beyond Michel's reach. No taxi would transport him through that mess, and he was nowhere near an L station.

Dammit. He was going to have to drive, wasn't he?

Well, if he had to drive, the least he could do was avoid traffic.

* * *

_That did not go well,_ Markus reflected. But forget Michel. For the moment, he just had to get away from the cops.

Boy, there were quite a lot of them, weren't there? They couldn't all be here for him, could they?

Speeding down the road, Markus saw a line of red and blue strobing lights in the distance. A roadblock, and Markus wasn't going to risk speeding through it. Not on a motorcycle.

He executed a sharp turn, rode the luxury Sayonara up some stairs, and barreled down an elevated pedestrian walkway. The maneuver temporarily eluded his pursuers, but he wouldn't shake this heat for good until he was out of the Mile. Then, with Quinn dead, he could leave Chicago, escape the Club, forget about Michel….

Yeah. He had to forget about Michel.

Popping back onto a street, he was nearly sideswiped by a cop car. How to escape? Every way out of this district would have roadblocks set up.

And that was when he saw it. Directly ahead of him, in the small round park beneath the Olivia L-train station.

He suspected that the abstract sculpture was meant to resemble an open hand, with a small globe in it. Hitting it at top speed with the motorcycle, Markus turned it into an improvised launch ramp.

It was a rash, split-second decision. Markus had barely thought through the lift-off. There'd been no time to consider how he'd stick the landing.

"I am not an action hero I am not an action hero I am not an action hero," he repeated to himself, his eyes widening in terror as the L-train track rushed up toward him.

The bike slammed onto the tracks, rattling Markus right through his skeleton. But somehow the shocks held and the tires kept spinning and Markus found himself riding right along the elevated train tracks, still alive, the police and the squad cars and the roadblocks twenty feet beneath him.

"I'm an action hero!" he shouted into the wind, laughing his head off.

He braked, brought the bike around, and accelerated westward again, veering out of the way of an eastbound train. He turned left over Wells Street, toward the bridge that would take him over the Chicago River into the Loop, and toward safety.

The bridge had been raised to let a boat pass underneath. Markus hit the button on his phone that sent the two halves of the bridge descending again, lining them up, a straight shot to freedom.

Someone was on the far half of the bridge, revealed in the motorcycle's headlight now that the two halves of the bridge were lowered into alignment.

It was Michel.

He was holding his baseball bat, lifting it overhead, readying a swing at Markus.

Markus swore, skidded out, fell off the bike and landed on his side. The bike went tumbling across the tracks before sliding off the edge of the bridge.

Michel charged him. Markus stood, bringing his pistol out and up - but not quickly enough. Michel swung before he could fire a shot, deftly knocking the pistol from his grip and sending it arcing into the river below. Before Michel could take another swing, Markus shouldered him in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. The baseball bat fell from his grip and clattered through the slats of the train tracks.

They rolled across the tracks and pushed away from each other, standing uneasily, facing off once more.

"How the hell did you get here in front of me so fast?" Markus demanded, offended to have his escape foiled just when it was so close.

"Speedboat," Michel said simply.

"Oh," Markus said. "That makes sense."

They both drew their phones, but Michel hit his button first, and it was the Ambrose Theatre all over again as the world around them went dark. Along the banks of the river, blocks of buildings shut down one after another as the city's power grid went offline segment by segment.

Blackout. No ctOS exploits. No hacking their way through this confrontation.

"No phones. No weapons. Just us," said Michel.

With his accent, it almost sounded like justice.

"Listen, can't we talk about this?" said Markus.

Michel laughed bitterly. "After all this, you seriously want to _talk_ with me?"

"All I ever wanted to do with you was talk!" shouted Markus. "_You're_ the one who wants to fight _me_. On top of everything else, I've had to run from the Club, and from the police, and now I've got to run from you, too. How about you show some mercy, huh?"

Something about that last plea seemed to strike a chord with Michel. He paused, then spoke in a soft grumble, "All right. Fine. You want to talk? You can talk. But first you have to answer one question. And you have to answer it honestly. If I think you're lying to me, we're finishing this. All right?"

Markus considered the offer. Could he risk it? If asked, could he answer truthfully about himself or his parents? Could he tell anyone about Nando, Felicia, the Marines, or the Chaldeans? Could he talk about Highland Park, or that awful, ruinous day in Grosse Pointe?

Markus swallowed, and decided that, if he had to, he could.

"Okay," he said. "Ask."

"Did you kill Ada Barreiro?"

Markus had expected a question about himself. He wasn't ready for this. Yes or no, whichever answer he gave would be, in some sense, the truth. But one answer would cost him the life he'd built, and the other answer would cost him whatever chance he had with Michel.

Markus hesitated.

Michel snorted. "I guess your silence is answer enough," he said, and went on the attack.

* * *

_I need to kill him_, Michel told himself as he took the first punch. _He's dangerous. He's a criminal, a killer_.

He tried not to think about how strangely connected he felt to this guy he'd really only met tonight. He tried to ignore the sense that they'd known each other for years, even if Michel knew nothing about him. Sure, Markus was a human being with hopes and dreams and all that rot. But so was every other killer criminal whose careers Michel had ended. People like Markus were why Michel hadn't been able to save Clara, the girl who'd saved him first, who'd been like a big sister to him. This time was no different, he reminded himself.

Well, there was one difference: This was the first time Michel was trying to kill someone who had a crush on him. It had made this entire chain of events extremely awkward.

While these ruminations continued, Michel had taken another swing, and another, and another. Markus dodged, ducked, or sidestepped each strike. But the next blow landed true, and Markus was prompted to retaliate.

Suddenly they had an honest-to-God fistfight going, and Michel felt a little less bothered by the prospect of killing him. Perhaps because he was feeling more bothered by the prospect of being killed _by_ him. Markus, when he finally cut loose, could more than handle himself.

One thing they did have in common: They were both down-and-dirty, street-hardened brawlers. There was no elegance to their fight, no dance. It was a pure bare-knuckle slugfest as they grappled together, delivering punches to each others' torsos, aiming for ribs, kidneys, stomachs. Michel tried to knee Markus in the midsection. Markus crouched, obstructing the blow with his elbows, so Michel settled for headbutting him, their skulls colliding with such force that they were both sent reeling away from each other.

Markus recovered first. He lunged forward, tackling Michel to the tracks, hammered fists onto his face.

"Don't make me kill you," Markus pleaded. "Please, don't make me do this!"

Between the rain, the wind, the punches, the blood stinging his eyes, and the ringing sound in his head, it was hard for Michel to make him out clearly, but it almost seemed like Markus was crying.

Michel gave up trying to fend off the blows. He fumbled blindly with his hands at Markus's chest, as if trying - feebly - to push him away. But he found Markus's expensive silk tie, took firm hold of it, and tightened.

Markus, choking, grasped at Michel's hands. Michel swung Markus down to the tracks, pinned him, gripping tightly.

Markus's grasp on Michel's hands weakened - far too quickly to be due to loss of consciousness. He simply rested his hands on top of Michel's and looked him in the eyes.

Michel saw no judgment in Markus's dimming eyes, no anger, as if he was just waiting, giving up.

It would have been easy now for Michel to pull the tie tighter, to finish him off. Very easy. He could finish this now, finish him forever. He took a deep breath.

The power came back on. The streetlights, the traffic lights, the skyscraper windows all returned to life. As did that giant television screen mounted on the Merchandise Mart on the north side of the river.

Reactivating, the screen showed an in-progress news report from WKZ TV, a standard split-screen with two talking heads engaged in an interview. The left side of the split showed a view from the news studio, with that WKZ anchorwoman whose name Michel had never learned, because who gets their news from television anymore, anyway?

But the woman on the right he recognized as Ada Barreiro.

The chyron on the bottom of the screen confirmed it: Ada Barreiro. WKZ TV reporter. Reporting live from an undisclosed location.

She was alive?

Michel couldn't hear any audio, but the closed captions mentioned a flash drive, a decryption algorithm, some sort of criminal conspiracy involving Blume. And an assassin who'd frightened Barreiro into fleeing the city and disappearing. But the journalist, even at risk of her own life, had decided that this story was too important to hide, which was why she'd reached back out to the network.

She was alive.

Michel looked down at Markus, whose attention had shifted from the newsfeed. Now he was looking south, down the tracks.

Following his gaze, Michel saw a northbound L-train rumbling straight for them. Normally, the ctOS, detecting the presence of people on the tracks, would stop the train before it could kill anyone. But Michel had his scrambler up, and he knew Markus would be running one as well. As far as ctOS was concerned, there was nobody on the tracks.

Michel loosened his grip on Markus's neck. "You didn't kill her?" he asked.

"No," Markus wheezed, "but I should have. She's dead anyway, now that she's out of hiding. Difference is, now the Club will be more determined to kill me, too. Though I guess you're taking care of that."

"They wanted you to kill her?" Michel asked.

"Obviously."

"But you didn't."

"Obviously."

"And now they're going to want her dead?"

"And that's a hat trick," Markus coughed.

"Could you track her down?"

"Probably…." Markus said, considering the question. "She's communicating electronically, so any fixer with enough time and talent could find her now. But if she still has the phone I reprogrammed for her, then that would make locating first her much easier."

"Will you help me save her?" Michel asked, his voice desperate.

Markus turned his attention away from the oncoming train, looked Michel in the eye.

* * *

The Chicago Transit Authority still put drivers in their trains, ostensibly to act as emergency failsafes. In case ctOS made a mistake, it was the driver's job to stop or override the train before anyone got hurt. In practice, it was the easiest job in the world, requiring zero attention - ctOS was infallible.

Except when it wasn't.

The driver of this train looked up from his text conversation just in time to see one young man with spiked hair and a tattered overcoat pull another young man, this one dressed like a yuppie, out of the train's path at the last possible second.

The two youths quickly vanished as the train rumbled past them, across the river. The driver radioed the CTA coordinator, and they sent some people out to the Wells Street Bridge to investigate.

When the investigators arrived, nobody was there.


	7. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Lucky Quinn was dead, as was Mayor Rushmore. The full depths of their manifold scandals were still making headlines six months later, with every day bringing new charges of blackmail, murder, even human trafficking. But probably the most shocking revelations - the ones that touched the most lives - were reports that the mob had been using the ctOS to spy on Chicago's citizens. Even an executive at Blume was implicated: the late Lucas Prather, VP for Strategy, who'd presumably been murdered by the Club when their dealings had soured.

The best scapegoats are dead ones.

Despite the best efforts of the Chicago South Club, Ada Barreiro at least was still alive, her book detailing her story still topping the bestseller lists. Her survival was aided in some part by the chaos gripping the Club after the death of their boss. It would've been a prime opportunity for the Black Viceroys to flex their muscles, grow their power, but they were having difficulties of their own, so the future of Chicago's criminal underworld remained in doubt.

All this, and Blume was expanding its operations despite its recent bad press, as more cities decided that ctOS's benefits outweighed its risks.

In short, these were unpredictable times, full of opportunities for anybody clever enough to seize them.

* * *

The fixer was seated on a restaurant patio overlooking a park, finishing a solitary brunch and sipping her second cup of coffee. With her phone out and the profiler running, she skimmed the local network, listening in on conversations, dipping into bank accounts, watching for trouble, looking for opportunities.

And then the offer came.

"We need you to dispose of a troublesome target," read the client's message. "But before he is disposed of, we need you to download some vital data from his smartphone. Can you do this?"

The fixer probed the client for more information, but eventually accepted the offer, paid her tab in cash, summoned a car, then walked to the stealth Papavero that was quickly waiting for her down the street.

Just as she'd expected, Samantha had lost her internship at Blume. But it was fine. She had job experience, training, skills. She'd landed on her feet, found new work. Freelance work. Contract work.

The T-Rex was out of the paddock. It just happened that she was the T-Rex.

**End**

**Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed it. Please leave a review!**


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